Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, announce they are divorcing - Business Insider

Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos announced in a tweet Wednesday that he and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, were getting a divorce after 25 years of marriage.

"As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends," the couple said in a statement posted on Jeff Bezos' Twitter account.

"If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again," the statement continued.

MacKenzie Bezos was one of Amazon's first employees. The couple met at D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund and technology development firm, before Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. They have four kids.

In Amazon lore, part of the company's business plan was written while the Bezoses drove across the country from New York to Seattle.

MacKenzie Bezos is a novelist, and she has written books including "The Testing of Luther Albright" and "Traps."

She previously told Vogue that the couple's contrasting personalities complemented each other. "He likes to meet people," she said. "He's a very social guy. Cocktail parties for me can be nerve-racking. The brevity of conversations, the number of them — it's not my sweet spot."

Today, Jeff Bezos is worth over $137 billion, according to Bloomberg, making him the richest person in the world.

Here's the full statement:

Here's the statement in plain text:

"We want to make people aware of a development in our lives. As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends. We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been married to each other. If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again. We've had such a great life together as a married couple, and we also see wonderful futures ahead, as parents, friends, partners and ventures and projects, and as individuals pursuing ventures and adventures. Through the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends. Jeff & MacKenzie"